Look inside and find.

cognitive dissonance

Last year, at the end of July, I made the choice to rejoin social media after spending nearly four years away from sharing myself with others online. I created a public Instagram profile and I created this blog- both with slightly altered titles. I had hidden from the commotion of online groupthink and validation for so long; I was anxious to rejoin it. Yet I reintegrated with more ease than I would like to admit.

Most of us know this cyberspace well; we often use it to seek out some sort of solace between the gaps in time during our waking hours. To sift through photographs of faraway places, delight in pictures of petals sprinkled across prosy poetry, or muse over a fleeting thought captured on a post-it note displayed for the masses. And that’s just a fragment of what floats atop these mainstream platforms’ shiny surfaces.

Down in their depths are the battle cries of warriors; a growing collective of whispers from voices told to hush, hush. The prayers of beautiful emboldened bodies who have found spaces to shine; the prayers of souls who just want to be found.

And then sometimes, there is just noise. Chaos and noise.

I never quite know how to hold that– and I wonder where my voice fits into such an overwhelming array of textured sound. I worry whether I will get lost in the fray.

I question: How do I gracefully carve out a space for myself to use my voice and make meaningful impact in a way that makes sense of my identity and of my own intersectionality? How do I consciously and carefully reclaim, create, and foster new ideas… and what about doing these things in the scarier world outside of this space in between?

Somewhere along the way, I chose to follow a path that stretches deep into the darkness of unknowns in my search for deeper introspection, and a complex understanding of the world which we inhabit. I want to look at my imperfect pieces and face them unabashedly. I strive to reduce the cognitive dissonance within me that at times makes me doubt whether it truly is okay for me to be here- because I do believe it is.

But then- what is here? I hold “here” as my present. I don’t have to have all the answers; yet I have to keep searching for answers. I take up too much space; I’m still allowed to inhabit my own space on this earth. It feels too hard to show up; it’s important for myself and for others that I keep showing up each day, in whatever capacity I can.I do my best to accept each of my conflicting, contradicting thoughts as they come, and I like to believe that I’m still blooming into tomorrow.